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As traditional publishing continues to experience lay-offs and lower ad revenue, the mommyblogger demographic has grown and flexed its opinion-leader muscles, as evidenced by the recent Mom 2.0 conference. People who weren't paying attention to us as writers a few years ago are scrutinizing us now. In fact, it seems we have our own Forrester report.
In this report, analyst Sean Corcoran recommends that marketers add "sponsored conversations" with mommybloggers to their overall repertoire. I haven't read the entire report, but I'm assuming "sponsored conversation" means "give a blogger product and ask that they blog about it" as opposed to "sponsored content," which means "put my logo above your blog post or somewhere in the middle so that when people read your post, they see my logo without you commenting on it."
I'm trying to decide if a sponsored conversation is different from a product review and, if so, if there are different rules. Product reviews have been around in media for a very long time. Magazines have done them for years. Consumer Reports built a brand around their outstanding product reviews. But what the heck is a sponsored conversation, and are they something we as mommybloggers want to have? (I know I am killing some of you with the word "mommyblogger," but Forrester used it, so I'm going to use it to maintain a common nomenclature. Also, I can't think of anything else that succinct.)
Jeremiah Owyang, also of Forrester, lists blogs who have sponsored conversations and includes BlogHer for its conference swag.
I'm a little befuddled at that inclusion, because while BlogHer does do product reviews via its members, conference swag is just ... conference swag. There's not necessarily an understanding between blogger and sponsor that this exact item will be discussed in a certain place within a certain time period. If the product is unique or useful enough, it'll make its way organically into blog posts or onto Flickr, but there's not the same agreement that a review blogger makes when she agrees to review a product. Also, I've been to all sorts of conferences in my professional career, and they all have swag. Swag in and of itself is not worthy of being included in this discussion, as it's not unique to women or to mommies.
Regardless ... here's the thing. Magazines and newspapers that do product reviews comply with journalistic standards, which require full disclosure and transparency about the reviews, the relationship of the parent company of the periodical with the parent company of the product being reviewed, etc. A journalist who's not completely transparent is a journalist who will not be working long. There's an ongoing discussion in the blogosphere and the marketing community about whether or not product reviews should be full-disclosure, journalistic reports or (and I say this respectfully) whether bloggers should just print the press release.
Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web points a gentle finger at mommies who want a piece of the action as well as his swag-receiving, professional-blogging colleagues:
Admittedly we say this from a position of privilege, as professional bloggers. Shouldn't everyone be able to get a piece of the action? We are sympathetic to this position, but can't help but feel like it's a morally ambiguous argument. Other than marketing bloggers, it seems that much of the "Pay Per Post" crew is made up of "mommy bloggers." Who would tell a mom with a blog that she doesn't deserve to make a buck, too? It's easy to be high minded about writing as an art when you make a comfortable living doing it.
Well, then maybe it is. I don't think anyone is arguing against mommybloggers being able to turn their personal blogs into money-making entities, or even that mommybloggers should turn down an Amazon gift card to road-test something they might have bought anyway out of curiosity. The issue isn't whether or not mommies should make money or whether mommies are qualified to do product reviews or have sponsored conversation, the issue is transparency. Just say you're doing a review, say you received money to attend the amusement park -- say you didn't pay your own money for whatever you're talking about, so that other people can decide for themselves whether they want to spend theirs.
Transparency is the holy grail of the publishing world. Oprah led the book world in an outcry a few years ago over James Frey's
